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Isn’t it weird that, in the past 25 years, we have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on road safety campaigns, but there have, generally, been no changes in that time to the penalties handed out for bad and dangerous driving? 

I tried to find out exactly how much has been spent, but I realised that was quite ambitious. 

Nevertheless, I can safely say that it’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, ChatGPT reckons it’s somewhere between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion. It’s probably way more than that. 

Either way, we’ve spent billions over the past 25 years trying to make people aware of the consequences of bad and dangerous driving, but many of the fines and penalties for drivers breaking the law haven’t changed. And the AA wants that rectified. 

I’m not saying don’t do it, but I’m not convinced that that would make much difference when it comes to what actually happens on the roads and how drivers behave. 

Aside from the money spent on road safety campaigns, let’s also not forget the gazillions spent on cleaning up the mess after road crashes. 

ACC, hospital costs, ongoing care for people – it’s estimated that that comes to about $10 billion a year. 

So, in the past 25 years, billions have been spent trying to educate drivers and dealing with the consequences of road crashes. But in that time, not much has changed when it comes to penalties. 

Which is why the AA’s road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen is saying today that, at the very least, fines should be doubled across the board to make up for inflation, and fines automatically adjusted for inflation on an ongoing basis. 

He says: "We need to bring these penalties back up so they work to make drivers think twice about taking risks on the road or breaking the rules because right now they're not doing that." 

I agree that they’re not working, but I don’t agree that harsher penalties would make a difference. Because when people are muppets out on the road, they don’t even think twice about the penalties, let alone the consequences. 

The AA thinks differently, and reckons the changes need to focus on the types of offences that cause the most carnage on the roads. 

Which are: people driving drunk or stoned, people not wearing seatbelts, people driving too fast, and people being distracted by things like mobile phones. 

Dylan Thomsen is saying that the AA, generally, wants fines to double but thinks the penalties for these particular offences might have to be increased more than that to really make a difference. 

The fine for using your phone while driving would certainly need to be more than doubled if we were to get anywhere close to the fines dished out in parts of Australia. 

In New South Wales, if you’re caught using your phone while driving, you’re fined $350 - or $470 if it’s in a school zone. In Western Australia, it’s a $1,000 fine. 

Here, it’s $150 and 20 demerit points. 

Dylan Thomsen points to a recent survey of AA members which found that most of them don’t think our fines are effective. Less than 50% said they thought the fines dished out for things like speeding and using a cellphone driving were tough enough to change behaviour. 

But do you really think harsher fines would change these behaviours? I don’t.